Alex Trebek, host of Jeopardy!, died Sunday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

In our age of manufactured dramas and hyper-sexualized reality TV, Trebek’s quick wit and soft-spoken intelligence made Jeopardy a consistent hit for over 3 decades. He once told magazine reporters he deliberately set his ego aside in service to the show and its contestants, to whom he was notoriously kind.

Trebek fought a difficult battle with cancer. Though he admitted questioning whether to continue with the painful chemo treatments, he kept fighting, because giving up “would have been a betrayal of my wife, Jean…a betrayal of other cancer patients who have looked to me as an inspiration … And it certainly would have been a betrayal of my faith in God.”

In a culture that fears suffering and death, Trebek pointed us to the value of life right up to the moment of its natural end.

May he rest in peace.